


in the woods somewhere

by epsiloneridani



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Commander Fox Week, Gen, Horror, Scars, Sith Alchemy, Sith Horror, Solitude, Touch-Starved, Violence, ancient sith temple, the Force is a parasite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25252177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epsiloneridani/pseuds/epsiloneridani
Summary: Fox remembers the alarm. He doesn't remember the impact. Kenobi's eyes are tinted gold.Some powers are best left alone.
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody & CC-1010 | Fox
Comments: 34
Kudos: 342





	in the woods somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a Hozier song. [You know the one.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6btN_cdLfE)
> 
> I'm [jate-kara](https://jate-kara.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr. Come yell about Star Wars with me.

He remembers the alarm.

He doesn’t remember the impact.

Slowly, Fox lifts his head. The cabin is twisted, turned over on itself. What used to be the shuttle’s cockpit has been half-sheared from the body of the ship and now dangles precariously from a single straining strand. There’s a choking haze hanging over his vision. He blinks against it, once, again. It stays.

Smoke.

Fox eases himself up on an elbow. His helmet is gone, lost to oblivion. His head throbs, but there’s no shooting pain in his back or legs. His chestplate is intact. He takes a shuddery breath. Good. Still mobile. That’s good. When whatever shot them down comes to finish them off, he’ll be able to do his job. Fight. Protect. Guard.

Guard.

He jolts violently. “General Kenobi,” Fox croaks, clawing at the wall until his hand finds purchase and he can use the hold to pull himself upright. “General Kenobi!”

There’s no answer. Fox mutters a vile curse and begins picking his way through the wreckage. It’s still warm, seething heat. He couldn’t have been out long.

“Kenobi,” Fox calls again. This time, he gets a low cry.

Kenobi is pinned beneath a bulkhead. His hair is plastered to his forehead, slick with sweat and blood. There’s a wild panic in his eyes. He struggles vainly against the oppressive weight.

“Easy, General,” Fox says, and grasps the bulkhead. Kenobi doesn’t have the leverage to dislodge it from his position; Fox can slide it along, inch by struggling inch, until Kenobi is free. As soon as the durasteel sheet separates from his chest, Kenobi crawls out, scrambling desperately for a few feet before the burst of adrenaline dissipates and he’s forced to stop.

He collapses.

Fox casts his gaze across the debris. The shuttle is stocked with medical supplies, but those have been long lost to the chaos and the disarray. There’s nothing to patch Kenobi up with. Fox grits his teeth.

Cody’s going to have his head.

“General,” Fox says, kneeling gingerly beside him. Kenobi’s forced himself up on his palms. His arms are trembling. His breath comes in short gasps. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know how stable the fuel cells are. That was a hell of a crash.”

Kenobi nods slowly. He swallows thickly. “Of course, Commander,” he says. His voice is rife with pain. “Though I’m afraid I may require some assistance.”

Fox gets one arm behind his back and the other beneath his knees and lifts him bodily, then takes as direct a path as he can manage out of the shuttle.

It’s suffocatingly humid.

The air is thick and cloying, clinging to the tender flesh of his throat with every breath. It slithers into his lungs and coils there. Suddenly, abruptly, completely irrationally, he wishes he could drive his fingers between his ribs and take hold of those sick tendrils and tear them, pulsing and writhing, from his chest.

It’s just the humidity. It’s just – humidity. Fox shakes his head slightly, easing Kenobi down a safe distance from the shuttle; if it goes up, it won’t take him with it.

“General?” Fox says. “Are you still with me?”

Kenobi coughs. “Yes,” he wheezes. His eyes dart around, never quite focusing on one point before they flit to the next. He pushes himself off the trunk with a low groan, straining toward something behind Fox. “Do you see—”

Fox glances over his shoulder. The forest is vast and ancient. The thickness of the trees’ trunks is a testament to their age. They tower high above, creaking in the breeze. The forest floor, however, is still. Maybe Kenobi hit his header harder than Fox thought. “Sir?”

Kenobi holds that eerie blank stare for a beat longer, then blinks quickly and scrubs at his eyes. His shoulders sag. “Nothing,” he says wearily. “It was nothing.”

Fox snaps off a nod. “I’m going to assess your injuries, then scout our surroundings,” he says. “If the Separatists have a base here, we need to know how close it is.”

“Go. I’ll be fine.”

Fox stares at him. Maybe it’s the concussion, or maybe he only hears what he wants to hear when he’s hurt. Seems like someone who’d get along with Cody. “I need to assess your injuries first, sir,” Fox says. “If you’re bleeding, I need to stop it.”

Kenobi shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says again.

Fox bites back a sigh. “Hold still, sir,” he says, and quickly checks him over. There’s no major bleeding; he has a few nasty gashes here and there, but none of them are deep enough to warrant alarm.

“See?” Kenobi says, and gives him a wobbly smile. There’s a distance to his eyes again, as if he can see something Fox can’t. It makes his heart turn uneasily. _Jetii_ and their Force. What does he know? “Fine.”

Fox snorts before he can stop himself. “All due respect,” he says, “but if I bring you back dead, Cody’s going to kill me.”

A small smile quirks Kenobi’s lips. “I’m sure.”

Fox stands. “I’ll be back,” he says, and slips away into the forest. When he glances over his shoulder, Kenobi is sitting ramrod straight, straining toward the horizon line. His eyes are blown wide. His hand is wrapped around the hilt of his saber. Fox follows his gaze.

There’s nothing there.

The forest is wild and overgrown. There’s no path. Fox picks his way through the undergrowth until he reaches the edge of the forest, then draws his pistols and creeps forward. If the earth is tangled in vines and brush, then it’s untouched by the Separatists: they would have marched their droids through and trampled everything underfoot.

Fox presses his back to a tree. One breath. Two.

Go.

There’s a small clearing, stretching from the forest’s tangled mass to a towering temple. The structure is wide and angular and so massive that he can just barely make out its peak. Fox tilts his head back and shades his eyes. The sky is a deep blood-red. There are dark clouds gathering on the horizon, shaded crimson by the diseased sun. Fox doesn’t know where they’ve crashed, or what shot them down in the first place, but the ticking in his chest tells him that the roiling storm is not a force they can weather in the burning husk of a shuttle.

Get under cover. Hide yourself from that oppressive sky. He fights it like he fights an instinct – a feeling deeper than bone and older than time.

Go inside.

Fox takes a step toward the temple. The light races in ragged rivulets until it disappears into the night-void; the wind whistles, a mournful howl. His skin is soaked; he shivers against the cold. There’s ice in his veins. Tremblingly, Fox raises his arms to shield his face against a sweeping sheet of rain. His cheeks sting.

Go inside.

His hand presses to the wall. The stone of the temple is cragged and decayed. He can’t tear himself away. Even through his gloves, the stone bites and cleaves. His fingers ache. Go inside. Hide away, safe from the weight of the sky.

They fell out of the sky.

Fox comes back to himself with a start. The wind whispers like a curse. The clouds seethe scarlet. His face is dry. The forest is bathed in faint red beams.

Kenobi.

Fox rips his hand away from the wall as if he’s been burned. He wants to turn and run until the pressure bearing down on him fades and he remembers how to breathe. The temple murmurs – the temple calls.

Fox curls a hand into a fist and back away.

Kenobi is exactly where he left him, still painfully upright. His saber is ignited; his face is bathed a pale blue. Fox stops. “General,” he calls tensely. “It’s me.”

The blade hisses away. Kenobi blows out a long and shuddering breath. “Of course,” he says weakly. “Of course.”

“There’s a storm coming in fast,” Fox says. “I found shelter.”

Kenobi’s eyes darken. He knows, somehow, but it doesn’t matter: the storm is too close. Fox pulls one of his arms around his shoulders and together, they stumble toward the bastion of blood and stone.

* * *

It smells like death inside.

Kenobi’s huddled in the corner, semi-conscious. Fox finds himself glancing at his wrist chrono and hoping it’s accurate. It’s been three minutes since he last checked and ten since he set Kenobi down; it feels longer. The moments tick on, tortured eternity. Fox half-wishes Cody had been allowed to come along, at least then he’d have one of his brothers beside him, but then he remembers the shattering crash, remembers Kenobi’s choked breath, and knows that they’re both lucky to be alive. Cody might have died. Better he isn’t here.

Fox is used to being alone, anyway.

“Commander,” Kenobi rasps.

The chamber into which they’d staggered is enormous, a grand vestibule for what must have been an even grander structure, millennia ago. It reeks of rot, now; Fox does his best not to notice the echoing clatter his boots make on the flesh-slick stone.

How deep do those corridors go?

“General,” Fox says, crouching beside him. Kenobi grasps uselessly at his shoulder pauldron. Fox stills his touch with a careful hand. Is that what Cody would do? “What is it?”

Kenobi’s eyes have that same wild panic Fox saw back at the crash-site. His grip flails uselessly again. “We have to get out of here,” he says, and struggles to sit up straight. Fox supports him. “We can’t stay.”

Fox glances over his shoulder. The entrance through which they accessed the temple looks as if it was once a magnificent archway; it’s long since collapsed, leaving the antechamber at the mercy of the elements. Rain lashes down just beyond the jagged opening, driving brutal droplets into the earth. Thunder rolls; the sky cracks bright in a burning streak. It’s not like any lightning Fox has ever seen before. It seems stronger, somehow; the essence of a power he can’t fully comprehend. The air itself hums with it, a low and thrumming beat at the back of his brain.

If they go outside, they won’t survive.

“We don’t have a choice,” Fox reminds. “I’ve activated the emergency subspace beacon, but even if they have found us already, there’s no way they’ll be able to land a gunship in this mess. We have to stay here until the storm passes.”

Kenobi’s breath hitches. “I know,” he whispers, like he’s afraid of being heard. Fox’s neck prickles; he glances over his shoulder again. There’s only the tempest. There’s only the dark.

Between the soaking sheets, the slithering shadows shift.

“We can move further in,” Fox says shortly, swallowing against the sudden lump in his throat. It’s so cold. It’s too humid to be cold. “We’ll be better protected in case the storm worsens.”

Kenobi’s eyes are glassy. He nods and lets Fox help him to his feet.

The deeper they go, the heavier the air becomes. Remember your training. Regulate your breathing. For all of it, Fox is still gasping by the time they stop. Kenobi is all but dead weight. When Fox eases his support away, the Jedi doubles over. His robes are scorched and tattered; they hang loosely on his frame. Even without his injuries, he’d be gaunter than he should.

“The Living Force,” Kenobi says, as if he’s heard Fox’s thoughts. His lips twitch into a mirthless smile. Slowly, painfully, he forces his spine to straighten until he’s upright and standing under his own power. His chest heaves; there’s an odd golden glint to his eyes, as if whatever strength he’s gathered is reflecting itself there. “I’ve been – it’s sustaining. It’s weaker here. Suffocated.”

Briefly, Fox wonders what he means by ‘sustaining’, then files it away under ‘things to ask Cody about if I survive this.’ He sweeps their surroundings once, straining through the gloom for a glimpse of that sinuous shadow, but there’s only stone.

Golden eyes. Living shadows. Maybe Kenobi’s not the only one with a head injury. Fox hesitates. “Here,” he says at last. _Jetii_. The Force. He doesn’t know how any of it works. “Can we stay here?”

Kenobi tilts his head to the side. For a moment, there’s only his ragged breathing and the distant sounds of the roiling storm.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “For now, I think – yes.”

Part of Fox wants to ask what he was listening for; a larger part is happier not knowing. If it was important, surely Kenobi would have mentioned it. “I’ll keep watch, sir,” Fox says. “You can rest.”

Kenobi snorts. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Because of the head injury,” Fox says briskly. “Medical protocol.”

“No, this has nothing to do with protocol,” Kenobi returns, and Fox’s clumsy grab at some kind of understandable structure is dashed. Kenobi presses his back to the wall and scans the room. His expression shifts and slides, weary to overwrought. Fox follows his gaze.

For the first time, he realizes where they’re standing.

The ceiling was once a high dome. The walls of the chamber are dreary and decayed, but if Fox stares at them for long enough, there are faces – frozen in writhing terror. A woman, her mouth open in a silent scream, hands outstretched. Fox dares a step closer. Her fingers are curled into talons. There’s something deeply unsettling about the set of her jaw: it’s displaced, unhinged, but still cracked wide. Beside her, a man – and beside him, another: they fill the perimeter of the space.

Fox’s blood runs cold. “General,” he croaks, and clears his throat. “What the hell is this place?”

Kenobi’s shoulders sag. His breathing is labored. “An ancient Sith temple,” he says. “I’ve read about them, in the Archives.”

“Is that bad, sir?”

Kenobi doesn’t answer. He presses his hand to the woman’s and bows his head. “If you submerge yourself deeply enough in the Force,” he murmurs, “you can learn to phase through solid matter.”

“So they tried it and were trapped?”

“No.” Kenobi’s voice is hoarse. “They were phased into the wall and solidified, perhaps as a punishment for some failing.”

Fox winces. “Sounds….unpleasant.”

“Excruciatingly.” Kenobi’s hand drops to his side. His fingers twitch, once, again. He steps away from the woman. “We’ll both keep watch, Commander. I think it would be best if neither of us was alone.”

If there’s a reason, he doesn’t volunteer it. Fox doesn’t ask, either – not about his logic, and not about the yellow sheen in his irises.

Time ticks on.

Fox clutches his pistols. Kenobi’s fallen silent. Silence is good. Silence is right. _There is never any true silence on Coruscant_ , Palpatine tells him, _so we must treasure what little we are granted_ , and Fox nods and nods and tells himself he agrees. After all, if he’s not dealing with some _shabla_ Senatorial dispute, he’s managing some kind of Guard shenanigans. They’re not silent. Laughing. Loud. Wrong.

Not his problem anymore. Palpatine’s moved him to his personal detail; if he’s not on duty, he’s at the Chancellor’s side, suppressing a shiver at a chilling touch to his shoulder or trying to return a smile that seems just a little too sharp. He’s always silent, then, because silence is right, and his quarters are always silent when he makes it back to them. His brothers are in the barracks, on the other side of the compound. He doesn’t remember when he was ordered to move away from them; he doesn’t remember the last time he saw them. He doesn’t remember the last time he knocked his helmet against Thire’s. Did he say goodbye to Thorn before he died? Silent. Silent.

Always silent.

He feels those sick tendrils again, cold corrosion. There’s a hand on his shoulder, a ghost then gone.

“Commander,” Kenobi breathes, and he’s at Fox’s side but it’s as if he never opened his mouth to speak. His saber hums to life in his hands. Its light should shift and flicker in a halo. It stops short.

The shadow swallows it down.

The creature fills the broad doorway and then some. It looks like it might have been a bear at some point, but had transcended that label an eternity ago. Its skull is distorted, bulging and bulbous on one side and crushed and concave on the other. One of its manic eyes is larger than the other, swollen and sickly and pulsing with diseased veins. Its mouth is too wide, its fangs too jagged and long. Its hide is a patchwork of fungus and fur. With a gurgle, it lifts one mangled claw and throws its head back to loose a rattling roar.

Then it lumbers toward them.

Its gait is jerky and shuddering and devastatingly slow. They could easily outrun it, or shoot it down before it reached them. Fox glances to the side. Kenobi is transfixed. There’s a glint of terror in his eyes, there behind the sickly golden glow.

“General!” Fox barks.

Kenobi jolts. In one smooth motion, he glides forward and cleaves through the beast’s chest. It shrieks; Kenobi severs its arm. For a breathless, eternal beat, it hangs there in a thick cloud of sizzling flesh and cauterized bone. A groan rumbles from it. Kenobi swings again.

The silence bleeds.

Kenobi’s breathing hard. His saber hisses out. Fox doesn’t lower his pistols. In his condition, nothing Kenobi does should be smooth. The Jedi stands motionless over the creature’s fallen form.

“Sir?”

“I’m fine,” Kenobi says. His shoulders sag. Fox just barely manages to holster his weapons and dive across the space to stop him from completely collapsing and cracking his skull open on the unforgiving stone.

“General!”

“I’m all right,” Kenobi says weakly. He fumbles at Fox’s shoulders until he’s standing again. The golden gleam has faded from his eyes. Fear hums in its place. “I’m all right.”

“Your eyes,” Fox says, without meaning to. “What’s—”

Kenobi shudders a hopeless breath. “There are depths,” he murmurs. “Some powers are best left untouched.”

“What was that thing?” Fox asks, doing his best to steady his voice, and wonders if Cody would be this unsettled. “The creature.”

“An experiment, I imagine,” Kenobi says. “The ancient Sith practiced alchemy.”

“How was it still alive after all this time?”

“There is a certain power to solitude,” Kenobi says, like he’s quoting a text. Maybe he is. “It has been sealed away here for centuries, alone, and sustained by the dark side.”

 _Is that what happened to your eyes?_ Sustained. Sustained. Fox shoves the thought away. He doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t want to know. “Do you think there are more of them?”

“Hard to say.”

Great. Again, Fox wishes Cody was here. Maybe he speaks cryptic _jetii_ more fluently. “Should we keep moving?”

Kenobi nods weakly. He tries to gather himself; he can’t. “I’m….going to need your help.”

Wordlessly, Fox obeys.

The stones weep and shift and screech, wet with blood. Blink, and they’re dry. He wants to shake his head. Brush off this web. The corridor is long, short; the end is there – the end is close. Is it close? It seems so far.

Fox forges on.

Kenobi doesn’t call a stop until they’ve navigated several twists and turns into the labyrinth. Fox memorized it as best he could. He’s breathing fear. The air is choked with it.

“Sleeping chamber,” Kenobi whispers, and lifts a trembling finger to point at the rear wall. “The Sith built secret passageways into their temples. To spy on one another.”

Maybe that explains the nausea coiled in his gut – burning at his throat. “They watched each other sleep? Why?”

“Because,” Kenobi says, “when you’re asleep, you are at your most defenseless.”

They murdered one another in their beds. Fox swallows thickly. His breath catches in his throat, a stuttering stab like the point of a knife. Did the shadows slither – slide? Is it just a trick of the eye? Kenobi stiffens beside him. Maybe they did move. Fox curls a hand around one of his pistols and tracks the back wall. If that’s where the passage is, maybe that’s where the threat will come from. They’re shrouded now. They’ll come out. They have to come out.

Wait. Just wait.

“Fox?

The voice is small – scared. So scared. Fox knows it well. “Wolffe?” he whispers, but there’s no reply. A shambling shape shuffles out of the darkness, lurching from side to side.

Fox almost screams.

Wolffe’s neck is twisted unnaturally, fused to his skull at an awkward angle. The scar on his face is deep and ragged and fresh. His armor is spattered with red. He holds out a hand. “Please,” he says. “Help. Fox – _please_.”

It’s not Wolffe, it can’t be Wolffe, it’s too wrong to be Wolffe. Fox’s heart leaps into his throat. “No,” he croaks, and clutches his pistols tighter. “No, it’s not you.”

“Please,” Not-Wolffe whispers. It drops to its knees. “Please – you can’t leave me.”

Wolffe is with the 104th and the 104th is lightyears from here. Fox wants to squeeze his eyes shut; he can’t tear them away. His lids are stiff, frozen open. “Don’t go,” Wolffe-not-Wolffe whispers. His voice cracks. His next inhale is wet and labored. “Please – I don’t want to die alone.”

“It’s not you.”

He can’t shoot.

Fox wakes screaming and kneeling and clawing at his face. Kenobi is standing over him. His lightsaber beams blue. Dimly, Fox realizes that his hand is wet. He’s bleeding. He lifts a careful touch to his cheek. It stings. There are jagged rivulets carved into the skin on the left side of his face, as if something – someone – something had taken hold of him and dragged its talons from his temple to his chin.

“Kenobi,” he whispers. “What—”

The room reeks of sickly seared flesh. Fox stumbles to his feet and steps carefully over the desiccated corpse. He nearly trips on another. He wants to cry out. His throat is too dry.

Maybe, once, it was humanoid.

“Zombies,” Kenobi supplies grimly. He’s oddly composed for a man standing in a room of freshly de-animated corpses. “The Sith—”

“Don’t,” Fox snaps. _Shabla_ Force. _Shabla darjetii_. It wasn’t Wolffe. Wolffe is safe. Wolffe is star systems away from this hell.

He’s safe.

Kenobi stares at him. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is gentler than Fox has ever heard it. “What did you see?”

 _My brother, begging, pleading, dying on his knees._ There’s bile in his throat, bitter in his mouth. “It’s not tactically relevant,” he says stiffly. “Why? Did you see someone?”

Kenobi’s face falls. “Cody,” he says. His voice breaks. He looks to his saber. His jaw clenches. Trembles. Fox’s heart twists. “It looked – it looked like Cody.”

And he struck it down.

“Wolffe,” Fox blurts. “I saw Wolffe.”

Kenobi’s hand presses to his shoulder. “We should keep moving,” he says. “We have to go down.”

Deeper. Lower. There are such depths, shining in Kenobi’s eyes. How did he miss it before? Were they always eclipsed by that void-gleam?

“If we go deep enough,” Fox hedges, “the stone could interfere with the signal. Besides that: we don’t know what’s down there.”

“I’m more concerned with what may be outside,” Kenobi says, “than what lies below.”

The temple murmurs. The temple calls. There are depths. There are depths, and Kenobi teeters on their precipice. His eyes are glassy – a chasm. Fox shifts uneasily. “Sir,” he says. “I really think we should head topside.”

Kenobi stares at him. “Cody,” Fox says, more desperately than he means to. “Cody will be here with the 212th looking for us.”

Kenobi jolts. Sheer panic washes over his face. His breath stutters for a second and, despite his injuries, he shakes his head harshly. “Of course,” he says hoarsely, like he’s coming out of a trance, and scrubs at his eyes until his skin is raw beneath the blood and grime. “Lead the way, Commander.”

What was he following when he led them down here, if he doesn’t know how to get back up? It churns in Fox’s chest. He should have insisted they stay in the first chamber. He shouldn’t have trusted. He should have known – somehow, he should have known. This place is poison for Kenobi. Why did he suggest they move further in? Why did he follow Kenobi down, down into that familiar darkness? It was safer on the surface, when they were just barely inside.

Fox doesn’t ask. Doesn’t want to ask. Doesn’t want to think about the diseased stone beckoning him – further, deeper.

Fall.

The corridors whisper and groan with every step. He filters it out. One step. Another. Forge on. _Shabla_ Force. _Shabla darjetii_. _Shabla_ diplomatic mission that Palpatine sent them on. If something on this planet was going to pull them down, shouldn’t someone have known about it by now?

Outside, the rain has slowed. Kenobi’s heaving. He staggers, Fox can’t catch him fast enough, and his hands slam into the stone and stay. A tremor runs up his arms, wracking his chest. He gasps.

Fox rips him away.

“General?”

Kenobi’s eyes have rolled back into his head. Fox checks his pulse, his breathing – fine. They’re both fine.

“General!”

Kenobi’s eyes close – open. “I’m all right,” he whispers. Fox gives him a moment, then helps him sit up. “I just – the stone. It spoke to me.”

“The stone spoke to you,” Fox repeats flatly. Kenobi nods shakily.

“Psychometry is not something at which I am particularly skilled,” he says. “But in this instance, I…I didn’t do anything. It was just – there.”

“What was?”

“Old memory,” Kenobi murmurs. “Death, mostly.”

He’s silent, then. Fox stays by his side. For a long beat, there’s only the pattering rain and the aching quiet.

Somewhere in the woods, something screams. Kenobi flinches. Fox grits his teeth. The night wears on.

Neither of them sleeps.

* * *

The _Negotiator_ feels nothing like home.

Fox spends most of his time on Coruscant, far from the conventional front. The halls of the ship might be familiar to the _vode_ that inhabit it, but to Fox, it just feels cold. He wanders it aimlessly, clutching at the blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

“You’re not supposed to be up.”

Fox quirks an eyebrow. Cody slings an arm around his shoulders. “Did you steal that from the medbay?” he asks.

“Sol was busy with Kenobi,” Fox says, and tries not to lean into the hold. He shouldn’t crave touch. He should pull away. He’s supposed to pull away. Set apart. Stand above. Silent. “How is he?”

Cody’s face is grim. “He’ll recover,” he says. The deep lines of his frown fade; he ruffles Fox’s hair. “And so will you. I heard you had a hell of a time.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Cody’s palm presses gently to the bandage on his cheek. “That’s gonna scar,” he says, and tries to quirk a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I’ll get another tattoo,” Fox says dryly.

Cody’s eyes are kind. For a second, Fox is back on Kamino. Cradled. Protected. Safe. “It’s okay, _vod_ ,” Cody murmurs, and gently, so gently, pulls him close. “You’re home now.”

Fox’s breath hitches. He buries his face in Cody’s chest and curls a desperate grip into his fatigues. “Don’t let go,” he whispers, and Cody tightens his hold. “Please just don’t let go.”

\--


End file.
